Before Breakfast
by LadySilver
Summary: The best day starts before breakfast. Written for fan flashworks challenge #13.


_A/N: Written for the fan_flashworks challenge: **breakfast**_

**Before Breakfast**

by LadySilver

"Ferb, I know what the answer is!" Phineas brandished the hand-held device into which he'd been punching calculations for the last several minutes for his brother to see. Leaning over, Ferb took in the display. The screen showed an interlocking set of wavy lines, a flashing set of zeros and ones, and a detailed rendering of a grapefruit that had been sliced in half.

Ferb nodded appreciatively. "It's just as we figured," he spoke. "If you consider the true nature of infinity and try to divide by the eternal—"

Before he could finish his summation, the boys' mother interrupted. "Phineas, Ferb, breakfast!" she shouted up the stairs. Phineas jumped and shot a quick glance at his clock. The glowing numbers showed that they still had a few minutes before the technical start time for breakfast. That would be pushing things, but they could do it. They'd already accomplished a lot, yet it seemed like there was never enough time to do everything.

He tossed the hand-held onto the bed where it nestled into the down comforter and probably shut itself off, taking with it the definitive answer to the age old theological question about angels and pin heads. When he turned around, Ferb had already donned the special full-body suit they had designed that would adjust the speed at which the atoms in his body vibrated.

"Quick, Ferb. Jump out the window. The suit is preinstalled with an anti-gravity device. It'll take you right up to the stratosphere. Oh, and take this." Phineas handed his brother a different small electronic device, this one sporting exactly two buttons, both of which glowed a dull green. "We're going to have to pick up the pace," he explained. "After you've touched the sky, don't forget to return yourself to your natural atomic frequency. Then push the button on the right. That'll let you shift into faster-than-light mode. That should let you get back here two minutes ago."

Ferb tucked the new device into his grip, his understanding and acceptance of the directions implicit, then climbed up onto the window sill in their bedroom. He wobbled briefly before finding his new balance. Though the sun was behind the house, he shaded his eyes and peered upward into the vast expanse of sky and the vaster expanse of space that he knew lay beyond it.

The sky shone with the washed-out blue of early morning and was smeared with streaks of clouds. It promised to be pleasantly warm and sunny all day. Who knew what space would be like, though. The weather-forecasters rarely had anything to say about that. He hesitated only a second, then jumped. The suit they had designed caught up and lifted him straight up so quickly that the neighborhood melted into streaks of color.

"How was it?" Phineas asked, turning around and retrieving the device from Ferb, who had returned just as predicted. Ferb had a shell-shocked expression plastered across his face. His green hair was in total disarray and the suit had the distressed look common to gear that's served its purpose and ready to be retired. The device had also seen better days. Its surface was worn and scratched, the light in the button on the left extinguished.

Ferb shrugged.

"Ok, so touching the sky didn't live up to its reputation," Phineas translated. "How was the FTL?"

"Brief," Ferb answered.

Just then, their bedroom door slammed open. Candace filled the doorframe, her arms planted on her hips. "Didn't you hear mom?" she demanded. "It's time for breakfast." The way she said the name of the meal had a menacing quality, as if she expected her brothers to view it as a threat. Slowly she seemed to realize that she hadn't caught them oversleeping. It was probably Ferb's suit that gave it away, Phineas figured. Candace's eyes narrowed and cast a sweeping, accusatory gaze over the room and her younger brothers. "You're up to something," she concluded. "I can tell."

Phineas stepped forward, always happy to include his sister in his plans. "Ferb and I are trying to do seven impossible things before breakfast," he replied.

Candace rolled her eyes. "The phrase is to _believe_ seven impossible things before breakfast," she corrected.

Phineas blinked at her. "What's the fun of that?" he asked. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

Once again, Ferb shrugged, his part in Phineas's plans a given no matter how absurd the apparent goal.

Candace's first reaction was to yell for their mother to come up to the boys' room and bust them. But it was already too late for that. While the evidence of whatever the boys were up always disappeared in between Candace seeing it and their mom arriving on the scene, the evidence for what they were up to now didn't exist at all. Even the strange suit Ferb had been wearing when she'd first entered had been replaced with his normal shorts and shirt combo. That small difference changed her whole mindset, though it was easier to blame her mood shift on was the scent of bacon wafting up from downstairs. Her stomach rumbled loudly and the only thing she could think about clearly right now was getting back to the breakfast table. "Count me in," she said.

"You're not going to try to bust us?" Phineas asked.

Candace screwed up her face, trying to work up the part of her that knew what she had to do. She couldn't find it. No wonder breakfast was the most important meal of the day; she just wasn't herself without it. It was her turn to shrug.

The three siblings stared at each other in a silent standoff, none of them quite willing to accept that Candace had said what she'd said.

To prove herself, Candace accepted without question the cluster of sparking, live wires that Phineas handed her. The pair of falcons Ferb had braced on his arm did cause a raised eyebrow. Rather than back out, she grinned tightly.

From his position at the foot of Ferb's bed, Perry lifted his head and chittered approvingly.

Another second passed, then Ferb spoke once again, the impending breakfast making him more loquacious than usual: "Well, that makes four."

END


End file.
